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Altruism and Egocentric
Pro-social Behaviour:- A general term for a variety of behaviours which are seen as beneficial to other people. For example, helping, rescuing, protecting, sharing and befriending.
Altruism:- A form of helping behaviour which is motivated behaviour by a desire to benefit another person rather that oneself.
Unselfish behaviour concerned with the welfare of well being of another. For example mother Teresa.
Egotistic Behaviour:- Helping behaviour which is motivated by a desire to benefit oneself rather than others, for example, stars making donations to charity to improve their profile. How do you know if an act is altruistic or egotistic.?
1. Discover the motive which govern behaviour.
2. Due to all the possible benefits gained. It is difficult to identify pure acts of altruism. Empathic – Altruism Model.
Main assumptions. Batson (91):- Believes altruistic behaviour is a consequence of empathy.
Empathy :- Involves feeling on emotional responses, that is consistent with another’s emotional state or condition. This empathy will then result in feelings of sorrow, concern or compassion of the other person.
Witness another in distress then empathetic concern then the person would attempt to alleviate the other persons distress. Empathy consists of a number of different components.
Personal distress.
Perspective Talking.
Empathic concern.
All three need to be present for an act to be altruistic.
Perspective taking leads to empathic concern. If the perspective of the other person is not taken, we experience only personal distress.
Personal distress is an aversive emotional reaction experienced when we see someone else suffering.
There are two reasons for help being given. altruism model.
Help is given because a person is in distress but for self orientated reasons, which is egotistic.
Or. Help is given because of empathic concern which is an act out of desire to minimise the others distress this is a genuine spirit of altruism.
The higher the level of empathy, the more likely altruistic behaviour is to occur. There is Positive correlation to prove this. Batson believed that there is such a thing as a truly altruistic act however altruism will only take its place if an individual can relate to the victims suffering therefore empathy is the key component. As we have seen, the extent to which people empathize with the victim plays a key role in helping behaviour. We empathize with the people we feel connected to more than we do with other people. In other words, connectedness facilitates helping. An evaluation of the empathy, altruism model. Positive. Rocker et al in 1988. Found that adolescents show a higher level of altruism.
Negative. Kruger 2003. All behaviour is genetically selfish because we want to keep the species alive developed from ancient ancestors who lived in small kin groups. Positive. Batson 1981. Had female college students watch while another student (confederate) getting electric shocks. To manipulate emotional reactions, the participants were told that the student receiving the shocks were either similar to them (high empathy) or dissimilar (low empathy) in addition half the participants were told they were free to go after watching the participant for two trials the other half was told they could go after ten trials, after two trials the confederate became distressed and revealed a child hood fear of electric shocks, participants were faced with a difficult decision, leave or take their place. High empathy students were more likely to take their place while low empathy participants were more likely to leave and take the easy way out, however, only those who had watched all ten trials in the low empathy condition offered to replace the confederate those who were free to leave did so.
Counter to this Fults 86 stated that it is possible that people help others so they do not get social disapproval.
Explanation 2.
Altruism. The negative, state relief model. Cialdini 87. Empathy leads to helping behaviour. A person, who experiences empathy for a victim, usually feels sad as a result.
The difference between altruism and empathy is that they help the victim because they want to reduce their own sadness. Egotistic reasons.
Therefore empathic concern should not lead to helping behaviour if steps are taken to remove the sadness that is usually found with empathy.
The model also includes the notion that helping is most probable when the reward for helping is higher than the costs.
Thus, people in an unpleasant mood are more likely to help than those in a neutral mood when helping is easy and very rewarding.
When we experience negative states our motivation is to reduce this by helping others. Therefore, there is no such thing as a truly altruistic act all helping is egoistic. But how do we know helping will improve our mood?
Its believed that the thought of helping will improve our mood is instilled from childhood, that helping others is positive and it will bring about good feelings.
The helping in this model is egotistic, it makes one feel better.
Negative state relief hypothesis:- Primary objectives in any altruistic act is the enhancement of our own mood.
Key points:-
Negative emotions can be bought about by many factors.
E.g. the event its self, argument with a friend. If an alternative way appears to reduce the feelings it will be taken and no help is given.
This explanation questions batsons view that altruism exists, it suggests that all helping behaviour is motivated by a desire to relieve an individual’s negative emotions. Therefore if mood can be improved using alternative methods it will be. Evaluation of Cialdini, negative state relief.
Not all negative emotions do increase helping. When negative emotions are self-focused, people become blind to the opportunity of helping. Only other-focused people help others more when they feel bad, a finding that contradicts the negative-state relief model and adds another motive for helping; the need for connectedness.
Positive. Cialdini 87, carried out a study in much the same way as Batson had done to test his empathy altruism hypothesis. Participants were again given instructions designed to create high or low empathy conditions and then put into a situation where they might help another person who was reviewing electric shocks. However before the request for help was made, the researchers offered a surprise monetary bonus. According to the empathy altruism hypothesis, highly empathic should help regardless of any attempts to alleviate their mood by other means. Cialdini and colleagues, however, found that when participants were given the surprise bonus there was no difference between the likelihood of high empathy and low empathy.
In conclusion, elevating the mood of the high empathy participants reduced their tendency to help. This supports the negative state relief model. This model shows that under some conditions, a mood lifting event may lessen our motivation to relive our negative state by helping others. This also clearly shows that helping can be for egotistic reasons.
Positive. Manucia 1984. Used a bogus mood fixing drug to show that helping could be solely done to help ones mood. Participants were asked to recall distressing memories. (negative mood conditioning). Or neutral memories (controlled condition) participants were then given a placebo drug and told it would freeze their mood making them unable to change it for the next hour or so. ( e.g. by helping someone in need) doing this eliminated any increase in helping by participants in the negative mood, this supports the negative state relief model. There are however many ethical issues with this study.
Negative. Isen and Levis 1972. Done an experiment where participants either found or did not find 10 cents in a phone box, immediately after they left a confederate dropped their files on the floor, 84% of people who found the money helped compared to only 4% that helped when no money was found. This challenges the view that people only help to alleviate their negative mood. Negative. The model is limited as it only accounts for mild negative feelings, according to the model intense negative feelings should not lead to helping behaviour. Franzoi found that the model focus on adults then children. Negative. The idea is based purely on a western view and disregards cultural differences.
Positive. Batson agrees egotistic if only personal distress present.
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